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The second TNT commissioned Babylon 5 movie was called In The Beginning. Straczynski pitched it to the network as a prequel to the four seasons that had already aired. However, Straczynski employed an interesting plot device as he wrote it, choosing to tell the story retrospectively through the eyes and words of one its most beloved characters, Londo Mollari.

Londo Mollari, at the end of his life, at the beginning of In the Beginning

As we know from flash-forwards in season three’s War Without End (Eps 16 & 17), there is a future in which all of Londo’s deceptions and betrayals have come home to roost. That future has now come to pass.

Centauri Prime. Well past its prime.

It is seventeen years after the Shadow war and the surviving remnants of the Shadow fleet have turned their eyes to Centauri prime. Nearing the end of his life, Mollari, now Emperor, watches from his palace as the Shadows and their “associates” turn the once proud Centauri homeworld in to a burning wasteland. He is interrupted from his lamentations by two children playing in the great palace’s halls but instead of shooing them away, he asks them to stay. In a moment of irony that isn’t lost on Londo, or the viewer, he asks the children “What do you want?” They ask for a story and he promises them a story “…About great deeds. About armies of light and soldiers of darkness. About the places where they lived, and fought, and loved, and died. About great empires, and terrible mistakes. A true story.”

And so, it begins……

Warning: Spoilers Ahead.

We next meet Londo as a young man. The Centauri republic and Earth Alliance are on good terms and Earth is looking to strategically expand its sphere of influence. Senior Earth Alliance commanders have called a meeting with Londo to find out what he knows about an alien race thus far unknown to Earth – the Minbaris. Londo warns them to leave the Minbari alone, or at least proceed with extreme caution but his warnings appear to fall on deaf ears.

Londo in his prime

Meaanwhile, on Minbar, Lenonn, the leader of the Rangers, a group that has watched and waited for a thousand years, fears the fulfillment of a prophecy and seeks the support of the Gray council. On that council are the novitiate Delenn and her mentor, Dukhat. Together they decide to travel to Z’Ha’Dhum to verify Lenonn’s claims – but perhaps Dukhat knows more than he is letting on.

Dukhat has more than just skeletons in his closet

On Earth, a young officer Sheridan is offered a plum assignment as First officer on board the Prometheus to head to the edge of Minbar space on an exploratory mission. Despite the opportunity to advance his career, he declines, citing the fact that the captain of the Prometheus, Captain Jankowski, is regarded as a “loose cannon” by his crew and does not do well in first contact situations.

At Delenn’s swearing in ceremony, the Prometheus comes across and shadows the Minbari ship. The Minbari detect the Earth Alliance ship and, as is traditional for them, change course and approach with all gun ports open in a show of open-handedness. Presuming the Minbari ship to be hostile, Jankowski orders the crew of the Prometheus to open fire – setting in motion a chain of events which will result in the Earth-Minbari war and the almost complete destruction of the human race. A war that will end only when the Minbari suddenly and inexplicably surrender on the verge of total victory at the Battle of the Line.

The Minbari Fleet “jumps in” at the Battle of the Line

As far as the Babylon 5 movies go, I think In the Beginning is by far my favorite. Having Londo as storyteller is an ingenious plot device because, as Straczynski says in the DVD commentary, it really is Londo’s story to tell. He is one of the few characters who can bear witness to all that passed because, as he says, “I was there.” Besides, Jurasik’s character is arguably one of the most beloved of the series.

Also, whereas in other movies, the infodumps are somewhat jarring, in In the Beginning, they are far more excusable because of the nature of the way the narrative is being relayed. Londo is the storyteller, it is literally his job to tell the story – warts and all.

In terms of story, if you’ve followed Babylon 5 all the way to the end of season 4 at this point, you really aren’t going to learn anything new about major events in the B5 timeline from In the Beginning. We know Commander Sinclair has memory loss from his time at the Battle of the Line, we know the Minbari surrendered at said battle with total victory within their grasp. We know Ivanova lost a brother in the war and that Sheridan earned the moniker “Star Killer” in the same war. But what In the Beginning does give us is the particulars of these events and the context in which they happened, effectively filling in the blanks of what Straczynski has been drip feeding us over four seasons. The movie is interspersed with clips from episodes from the previous four seasons (namely And the sky full of stars (Ep 8, S1), A late delivery from Avalon (Ep 13, S3), War without End Pt 2 (Ep 17, S3), and Atonement (Ep 9, S4)) – which integrate seamlessly and go to further illustrate Straczynski’s brilliant writing and his original vision for an overreaching story arc that spanned all five seasons.

Construction begins on the first of the Babylon Stations

In the Beginning truly is a B5 fans movie. With the exception of Garibaldi, Lyta, Vir and Lennier, the entire ensemble cast puts in an appearance to greater or lesser degrees. In fact In the Beginning explains so many story threads in one nice little package it’s hard to imagine this movie not getting made just for the B5 faithful – let alone to introduce a whole other network’s viewers to this universe and its characters.

Andreas Katsulas reprised his role as the patriot G’kar

As I mentioned before, the DVD commentary features Straczynski and he is accompanied by Michael Vejar, who he openly admits was one of his favorite directors on the show. It may be what makes In the Beginning such a gem. Between them they drop nuggets of information about the movie’s plot, production, shooting techniques and schedule. It makes for interesting listening. At one point Straczynski mentions that there is some debate about when In the Beginning should be watched – either before you start watching the series because, well, look at the title of the movie – or at the end of season four of the show. I definitely fall in to the latter camp and I say that only because there are moments of foreshadowing in In the Beginning that just aren’t going to make any sense if you haven’t watched the show up to the end of season four. Not only that, but much of the beauty of Babylon 5 is the plotting and slow revealing of information that Straczynski does so well. To dive in to the show knowing all this back story would, I think, seriously curtail your enjoyment of the show itself, so I say watch In the Beginning here, when you have reached the end of season four.

Prior to picking up Babylon 5 for it’s fifth and final season, TNT commissioned two Babylon 5 TV movies. The first of these to be filmed in 1997, but which aired second in 1998, was Thirdspace.

Thirdspace is set, as we learn in Captain John Sheridan’s opening monologue, in the middle of the Earth year 2261 – the year between wars. In terms of Babylon 5’s series chronology, this places it somewhere between Into the Fire (S4, Ep.6) and Atonement (S4, Ep.9)

Whilst returning to Babylon 5 after a skirmish with raiders, Ivanova’s starfury squadron picks up something on their scanners. Ever the curious ones, they go to investigate and find a massive artifact floating in hyperspace that they then tow back to the station.

Always wondered where I’d left that hammer!

Preliminary investigations reveal nothing since anything that goes near the thing gets sucked dry of its power, but back on the station itself, all is not well. Aboard B5, the telepath Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman), who has visited the Vorlon homeworld and been somehow altered by the ancient alien race, is clearly disturbed by the artifact’s presence. Could it have anything to do with the fact that the artifact itself is covered in Vorlon hieroglyphs?

“Lyta, if you wanted to get to know me better, all you had to do was ask!”

It is not long before Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX) get wind of the discovery and before you can say “first contact situation,” Dr. Elizabeth Trent (Shari Belafonte) and Bill Morishi (Clyde Kusatsu) have arrived on B5 to request access to (read: take over the investigation of) the artifact. Having had experience of IPX (It was an IPX expedition to Z’Ha’Dhum which resulted in the loss of his wife), this irks Sheridan no end – thus setting up a tense situation between the B5 captain and the team of archeologists who feel a misplaced sense of entitlement to the artifact.

As time goes by, stranger and stranger things begin occurring on Babylon 5 with many people experiencing visions (including a shared dream between Vir and Ivanova), and the station itself going into crisis mode as the artifact stationed outside slowly drains B5 of its power. Thus Sheridan is thrown into a race against time, both to protect the station and its population and to find out what the artifact is before IPX unlock its secret. All the while Lyta Alexander gets progressively more distressed because, as she knows, the Vorlons have seen this awful thing before.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

As a stand alone movie Thirdspace works, and by that I mean it completes its story arc and comes to a satisfactory conclusion. What hurts Thirdspace is where it falls chronologically in the overall Babylon 5 story arc. Because of when Thirdspace is set, many of the major characters we have come to know and love are out of the picture – Garibaldi is absent having resigned as chief of security, Londo and G’kar are both on Centauri prime. Even some of the major characters who do remain on the station barely feature (Delenn, Franklin, Marcus, Lennier), with a couple of them making only brief cameos. Admittedly this movie is not about them but the result of the scripting means that Boxleitner, Christian and Tallman have the lion’s share of the acting put firmly on their shoulders and it is on them that the movie ultimately gets carried. Boxleitner, as always, does an excellent job as Sheridan, and Tallman does a lot of acting weird and passing out when it all becomes too much for her brain to handle, but Besides Shari Belafonte’s commendable effort as Dr. Trenton, the movie feels as if it’s padded with construction worker/starfury pilot “redshirts.”

Like all B5 movies, Thirdspace suffers from infodumps – specifically when Dr. Trenton informs Sheridan of how much they know of Lyta’s visit to the Vorlon homeworld and when Lyta herself tells Sheridan what they (the Vorlon’s) know about the artifact. However, it is perhaps more excusable in Thirdspace given that the fifth season of B5 was almost written off before being picked up again and the TNT movies provided an opportunity to address some of the story arcs that had been present in the show. Also, if we’re going to watch Thirdspace as a stand-alone movie, we need to know about these characters and their histories – and there really is no quick or easy way to do it without having a character espouse all this information.

My one major criticism of Thirdspace is its ending which feels like an inevitable outcome from the moment the artifact arrives in B5 territory. The movie seems to barrel towards its conclusion without a second thought for other possible scenarios that might warrant some lengthier exploration – but maybe that’s the point. It’s a movie crammed into a finite period of time – it’s meant to have a definitive ending. The only problem is, when it comes it feels very much like a deux ex machina moment.

There’s a commentary on the DVD which has input form the director, Jesus Salvador Trevino, Bruce Boxleitner, Jeff Conaway, Patricia Tallman and Stephen Furst, but those of you looking for any particular insight will be disappointed. Trevino does his best to drop some nuggets in about the movie, concept design and the shoot and Boxleitner humors him throughout but for the most part the v/o consists mostly of Tallman, Furst and the late Jeff Conaway goofing around and reminiscing about their time on the show. If you’re interested in that kind of thing, then great, but it’s not exactly a commentary on the movie per se.

Overall, Thirdspace is an OK addition to the B5 canon but it’s certainly not a “must-see” in terms of its quality, storyline or content relating to the B5 timeline/universe.

It’s been ten years since the Earth-Minbari war, a war in which the Minbari unconditionally surrendered despite dominating and being on the verge of complete victory. Babylon 5, mankind’s “last, best hope for peace,” is about to go operational or “on-line” and the last remaining factor to fall in to place is the arrival of Ambassador Kosh, the Vorlon. When Kosh arrives early, the command staff of Babylon 5 are thrown for a loop and as they rush to meet him, an attempt is made on the Vorlon ambassador’s life. What follows is a desperate race to identify the assassin and save Kosh’s life because otherwise, everything Babylon 5 is supposed to stand for – peace and neutrality – is thrown into jeopardy.

All right, to be fair, as pilot movies go, “The Gathering” was not the most auspicious of starts. Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this post, let me begin by saying that there are two versions of “The Gathering.” The first, is the original version (1993) that was aired on television and had music by Stewart Copeland of The Police fame. The second is a Director’s cut/Special Edition (1998) that Straczynski had the opportunity to go back and re-edit and which has music by Christopher Franke, the man who would go on to do the music for the entire series. This post is related to the 1998 version but much of it will apply to both.

In The Gathering we are introduced to, among others, the following characters:

As expected, many of these characters would go on to populate the series. Some, however, would not.

The Babylon 5 Command Crew- As never seen again

The Gathering succeeds in as much as it completes its story arc and comes to a satisfactory conclusion. Where it fails is that it has an awful lot of information to dispense to set up the five seasons that will follow and occasionally you get characters lecturing other characters with infodumps just so we know what’s going on at that moment in time and as reference for what is to come.

For the most part, The Gathering was well cast. Straczynski said that he wanted Babylon 5 to be multi-racial as well multi-species – “Almost like a United Nations in Space.” As a result you have Tamlyn Tomita as the Asian Lieutenant Commander and Johnny Sekka as the African American doctor. Unfortunately they are also two of the weakest characters in the movie. I think the reason I bought into Babylon 5 so heavily was because I had no prior knowledge of any of the actors who played the major characters. It wasn’t like Battlestar Galactica (Oh, that’s that dude from Miami Vice) and so it was easy for me to lose myself in these characters. However, when it came to Lieutenant Commander Laurel Takashima and Doctor Benjamin Kyle in the pilot, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t buying it. This is a shame because both actors have had long and successful careers (Sekka is now sadly deceased). Tomita gives a particularly stiff performance as the station’s second in command and, to be honest, I just don’t get the feeling that her heart is in it. Sekka, on the other hand, might just have had poor material to work with. His delivery of the old sci-fi/horror favorite “Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on here!” is so bad it’s almost laughable. In his commentary, Straczynski says that he wanted Sekka to play the doctor throughout the series but health issues prevented Sekka from doing so. To be honest, I think this worked in Babylon 5’s favor as Richard Biggs was then cast as Doctor Stephen Franklin and he excelled in that role.

Michael O'Hare asCommander Jeffrey Sinclair

I always liked Michael O’Hare as Commander Sinclair. He would go on to star in season one of the show and gave Sinclair a level-headedness and confidence that you’d expect to see from a commander burdened with the responsibility of a gigantic space station and a few million lives.
Jerry Doyle also brought some Bruce Willis/John McClaine-esque hard nosed grittiness to the role of Garibaldi.

Jerry Doyle and Bruce WillisSeparated at Birth?

I’m sure his similarity to Willis was not pure accident given the massive success of the Die Hard franchise.

Now I have a PPGHo! Ho! Ho!

But Babylon 5 was not just a show about a station and its Earth Alliance crew and it was the other principal actors who played the alien ambassadors who were perhaps one of its greatest strengths. Mira Furlan, Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas brought Delenn, Londo and G’Kar to life, creating complex, mulit-faceted characters who were feisty, compassionate, devious, funny, tragic and inspirational all at the same time.

Fans of the show who revisit the pilot will notice that Delenn’s make up is very different in the movie. She has more facial prosthetics and patterning on her head which is somewhat similar to G’Kar’s. (Not the blue mandelbrot set – yeah, what was that all about??? – that would go on to adorn her shiny palate in season one). Her head bone prosthetic also looks like it could do with a bit more glue!

Wait! You're not supposed to change until the end of season one!

The difference is because Delenn was originally intended to be a male character who would undergo a much more radical transformation at the end of season one, changing from male to female. There was work done to enhance/alter Furlan’s voice but in the end it just didn’t work and so that plot detail was discarded and Delenn’s “change” was something a bit less fantastic.

G’Kar’s make up (arguably one of the best in sci-fi) was also slightly different in the pilot.

Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar

The Centauri hair piece was never intended to be quite so large, but apparently after it was fixed to Jurasik’s head and before it was trimmed, Jurasik walked in on Straczynski and as a joke said something along the lines of “I like it like this,” and Straczynski said, “OK, we’ll keep it.” So the joke ultimately backfired on Jurasik and for five years he, Londo and every other male Cantauri character was stuck with big hair. The other nuance that Jurasik brought to Londo was that accent. (No, Peter Jurasik does not talk like that in real life). On set, to get into character, Jurasik would repeat the oft used line that B5 fans got to know and love – “Ah, Mister Garibaldi!”

You should be glad I am not sitting in frontof you at the movie theater - yes?

On a personal note, G’Kar and Londo would go on to become my favorite characters because of their ongoing feud. Katsulas and Jurasik played off each other extremely well and made each of the character’s growth over the course of the show a smooth and believable progression.

Patricia Tallman is our first introduction to telepaths and the shadowy organization that controls them – the Psi Corps. In The Gathering, her character is mentioned as being Babylon 5’s resident telepath although, despite returning in later seasons, her character is replaced in seasons one and two by Talia Winters played by Andrea Thompson. That said, her inclusion in the pilot is essential due to her direct contact with Kosh (no human has ever laid eyes on a Vorlon outside of their encounter suit) and what is to come much later in season three.

Patricia Tallman as Lyta Alexander

Again, fans of the show might recognize another notable face on the command staff of B5 in this pilot. Ed Wasser, who would go on to be excellent in the role of the sinister Mr. Morden plays one of the operators in the observation dome or “C&C” as it also became to be known. It’s only a bit part and he is sadly cursed with the job of computer operators in all sci-fi shows – namely repeating anything the computer tells him in frantic tones (“Hull breach in brown five!”) or stating the completely obvious, (“There’s something coming through the jump gate.”) Nevertheless, it is both a shock and a pleasant surprise to find him here.

Hull breach in brown five! ...my associates and I could not care less

Wasser was originally employed by Straczynski as a reader – to read the script opposite other auditioning actors. Straczynski gave him his bit part in the pilot but when it came time to cast someone in the role of Mr. Morden, Wasser immediately sprang to mind. He was suave, debonair, dashingly good-looking and his deep voice was perfect for the role. He played Morden to a tee, being perfectly charming and yet casually indifferent.

John Iacovelli, B5’s production designer joins Straczynski on the DVD commentary and it’s interesting to hear him talk at length about the sets. Babylon 5 was shot on an extremely low budget that required the crew to improvise and be innovative in their set design. The modular nature of the station itself helped in this respect, allowing walls from one set to be used in many others. In fact, many of the sets doubled as two or three locations on the station. One of the things Iacovelli says he wanted to incorporate into Babylon 5 was a lot of texture and color and again, this helped him bring Babylon 5 to life. Many of the areas of Babylon 5 were color-coded and so to give the impression that characters were in different parts of the station all that was required was to change the strip lighting on the sets. Winding corridors were also shot one way and then the other to give the illusion that Babylon 5 was indeed a vast space station.
Many of the sets that were constructed for the pilot were used throughout Babylon 5’s five season run.

The other thing about The Gathering that is worth mentioning is that it is in this pilot that we are first treated to the CG that would become the signature effects for the series. Babylon 5 was unique in that it was the first sci-fi series to rely totally on CG and not models for its external station/ship shots. Despite looking a bit dated now, given the time that Babylon 5 was produced, the CG effects are actually pretty good. For a good chuckle at the technology used and a deeper appreciation of what they managed to achieve with the CG, check out this article.

And so, as I come to the end of my thoughts on The Gathering it is worth mentioning that at the end of the movie, when the mystery is solved, one of the characters informs Sinclair that “there is a hole in your mind.” It is this cliffhanger/revelation that is central to the whole Babylon 5 story and the hook that is supposed to make you continue watching the show.
As Sinclair admits earlier in the movie (remember those infodumps I mentioned?), he fought at the battle of the line, the final battle of the war and mankind’s last-ditch effort to repel the Minbari before they inexplicably surrendered. During that battle Sinclair, giving up all hope, set his Starfury fighter on a kamikaze style collision course with a Minbari war cruiser. Just before impact though, Sinclair believes he blacked out and for a twenty four hour period he can remember nothing. When he comes to, he discovers the war is over.

Did I like The Gathering? As a fan, yes. I think it does a good job of telling its own self-contained story whilst foreshadowing a lot of what was to come in the seasons that followed. It’s only from going back and watching the pilot again that you can actually pick up on all the references and events that will have so much meaning later on, so in that respect, it’s interesting for fans but I’m not so sure how interesting it is for non B5-o-philes.
The acting from some quarters leaves a lot to be desired and the writing could have been better in places – but again, with so much information to get across and ninety minutes to do it in, you can understand and maybe even forgive The Gathering for its infodumps. All that said, I’m not sure The Gathering succeeds as a pilot and by that I mean I’m not sure if it’s strong enough to convert B5 newbie’s to instant fans (clearly it succeeded in getting the show green lighted). I think there are stronger episodes in season one that I would recommend to people before I’d have them watch The Gathering.

I have written this post with the aim of giving my overall impressions of the Babylon 5 pilot and without going in to too much plot detail. For an alternate view and a complete summary of the plot (with spoilers) check out this post.

If you enjoyed this post, jump back soon for my thoughts on season one.